At night, the protests that once echoed throughout New York thinned out. SHIELD and the sins of long ago had come back to bite them like a pack of wolves. Like any pack barking, rest was a necessity. Thus, the city was at peace as the moon hung high.
It was important to understand, however, that this was not some massive city-wide protest. Not every street had been flooded and it was not as though this ranked as the loudest, greatest protest in New York's history. Certainly top five, no doubt about that. It was a great protest. But, and this was key, the police were being wrung dry. Forced to stay late, patrol late, take naps during shifts.
Crime started to bubble up again.
A stolen car here. A smashed storefront there. Complaints filed and forgotten, buried under a precinct's worth of overtime slips and coffee gone cold on desks nobody sat at for long. The city had survived Creature Z. It had survived SHIELD's slow public unraveling. It would survive this too, in its own fashion.
But surviving didn't feel right. It just didn't. To only live was to live without meaning. To live with happiness and joy and hope, that was the right way.
Someone was there to give hope.
Knickerbocker Avenue was known for a couple things. However, what acted as its crux, its centerpoint, was Knickerbocker Avenue station. Raised up as a subway, a fleet of green stairs heading up to the train that arrived every so often. There were umbrellas and stores and such underneath the intersection too.
At night, it was all deserted, save for the usual homeless or the smokers.
As though daring, the laughter of crime echoed in the back of a building facing the green train station. Behind a shuttered pawn shop, three men ran back and forth, and back and forth. Dressed in ordinary clothes, they were carrying boxes after boxes into the back of a white cargo van.
What had they done?
"Can't believe that old idiot hired you!"
"Hey, you make it sound like I did this in a day! It took me a month to get the trust to close up shop!"
The pawnshop's old owner had hired one of the criminals foolishly. He was a good-looking man with perfect teeth and brown slicked back hair. Good-looks often deceived. Good-looks often brought psychological comfort. The cackling continued. Between the three, the good-looking criminal was the only one that was slim and fit. The other two were round and strong.
"We got one last box. We high-tail out of here," said the roundest of the trio. He jogged over to the cargo van, box jiggling with metal, and put it down. "Oof. We're done—!"
The good-looking criminal was already jogging to the driver's seat. The other was heading to the passenger's.
The last criminal was closing the doors.
Thud!
That was the thud of the van's back-doors closing.
"Alright—"
Thwip!
He was gone. The other criminals whipped their heads around. Hands on the side doors and at an angle where they could not see their round friend. In the night, vision was more difficult. On the flip end, it was easier to hear. And they most certainly heard something.
"Uhh, buddy? You alright? You fall or something?"
Right as the round one at the passenger's door was about to step forward, a fist struck from an angle his mind hadn't accounted for, slamming into the van pallets without so much as a grunt escaping him. Now that—that the good-looking criminal heard fully and it rang alarm bells.
He quickly went to the van's front side, peeked by going on his toes, and gasped. "Oh shit." He ran. He made it quite far, actually. He was about to see the sidewalk, the light of normal society.
Thwip!
Alas, a strand of webbing caught his ankle and dragged him back across wet asphalt. "Help me—!" The webbing suddenly found its way to his mouth, silencing him. He was dragged, dragged, and dragged, till he was laid next to his companions.
They were glued to the dumpster in scarlet cocoons. Everything was furiously covered and webbing up save for their heads. The good-looking criminal was in terror seeing his friends, and then in utter horror when he saw his enemy.
"Wait, wait, wait—"
His eyes were wide and red in the corners. His pupils reflected the figure of the blood-like Spider-Man. Those white lighting-shaped eyes gave no emotion but judgement. Terror was all he felt. Good.
"D-don't eat me! Please!"
There was this moment of stillness upon that accusation. Spider-Man had not brandished a tongue or anything. Sure, he stared at his brain. At his head. At that perfectly soft skull that was ripe for the taking.
But that didn't mean he was going to eat him.
Right?
Rather than cocoon him like his friends, thwip and thwip, Spider-Man just attached his arms to the dumpster. The smell was quite thick so he made sure the webbing receded to only cover his mouth.
From the perspective of the criminals, he was judge, jury and executioner.
For Spider-Man, this was a test.
'My control over webbing. It's amazing. To think I could literally control webbing from short-distance now.'
'Yessss, we can!'
Spider-Man soon left with a nice calling card left for the police and the owner. They were like grim ornaments left for whoever arrived first with a badge.
***
Several blocks south, outside a Capital One branch on Flatbush Avenue, a sedan idled at the curb with its headlights off. In the borough of Brooklyn, it was an avenue with its leafless trees, brown buildings and ultimately a commercial corridor. A crossing between the larger skyscrapers and the leafy, tree-lined residential blocks and the industrial areas near the water. Rapid transit did its thing even late at night.
Zooming into the grey sedan, two men reviewed their plan for the third time that hour. A folded note rested on the dashboard between them and a duffel bag lay empty and waiting on the back seat. The street beyond the windshield was quiet at this hour, save for a distant bus.
"Come on, we got this! We got this!" said the parched-lip youth in the beanie.
"...you really think we got this?" his friend asked. He was practically a twin of him: same beanie, same parched lips. They were brothers.
"Yeah, of course! Now, come on!"
When one guy left a car, the other did too. It was human nature. So even with protests and inner doubts, the would-be criminals summoned the courage to stand tall. With a click of the car keys, the sedan was locked.
"Uh, why'd you lock it? Remember the bag in the trunk?"
"Oh shit, yeah—"
They were cautious, they were finicky, and when they heard a twitch, they snapped toward it. It was like being shown the light. The Capital One branch was small and amongst the brown flat array of buildings. To the left was another bank and to the right was another bank. Both with stupid names and what they assumed was not enough money.
That wasn't what they were looking at. Their heads went up.
They saw Spider-Man.
They saw him sitting atop the brown building, the moon perfectly behind him and the red like a splash of blood.
They blinked, they heard a thwip, and they saw him launch through the street. Their beanies wobbled a little as he swung the length of the avenue in two long, silent arcs and vanished behind the cornice of a building three blocks up.
Neither man spoke for a long moment. Like a collective, like the social beings they were, they went back into the car. The driver's hand turned the ignition.
"So, uh…"
"Yeah, let's just…let's just keep trying to find a job."
The sedan pulled from the curb and merged into the empty avenue, bound for nowhere in particular.
***
'FACIAL MATCH. NINETY-FOUR PERCENT CONFIDENCE. CORNER BOOTH.'
That was Herbie ringing in his brain again. The connection between himself, Rash, and Herbie was reignited. A telepathic-like connection born from science.
Spider-Man turned invisible and sat atop a brown building. There were a lot of those in Brooklyn. His eyes narrowed.
"Hm."
Across the street, through the fogged front window of an all-night diner, four men sat around a chipped retro-red table, coffee cooling untouched in front of two of them. They most definitely were not aware of the rooftop opposite, to the invisible Spider-Man crouched motionless at the ledge.
'Names?' Felix asked.
'CROSS-REFERENCING AGAINST DECOMMISSIONED PMC ROSTERS. THREE OF THE FOUR PING MATCHES FOR A PRIVATE CONTRACTING OUTFIT THAT DISSOLVED AFTER A SCANDAL IN SOUTH SUDAN FOUR YEARS AGO. FOURTH INDIVIDUAL HAS NO MATCH.'
"Documentation?" he asked in barely more than breath against the mask's inner mesh.
'Pristine. Passports, work visas, local ID.'
Pop-ups appeared in his vision. It was great to feel and breathe the information again. To be investigating properly like the superhuman detective he was. These forgeries, they reminded him of SHIELD's cover programs.
"Someone spent real money on these men. Or, hrm, these men are just that good."
The diner's neon sign buzzed weakly against the black sky, half its letters dark. Inside, the four men laughed. For anyone else, these were simply four strangers enjoying a plate of eggs at three in the morning.
But Spider-Man knew the truth.
"Damn mercenaries."
So many of them were crawling into New York. With the international upheaval, it was bound to happen. Criminals, big and small, trying to worm their way into the city.
"The Big Man is probably going to love this," he murmured.
But…
"I can't do anything."
Those four men in the diner were just eating. There was no crime being committed. No weapon drawn, no threat spoken loud enough for a passing officer to act on, nothing but four men with excellent paperwork. That was the key part too: excellent paperwork.
He glanced at his wrists. "My web-shooters aren't here. Shit. Can't print out evidence."
'I AM STILL COMPILING THE EVIDENCE, MASTER FAETH.'
He exhaled. "Meaning, I should leave them alone, right?"
At that, his heart clenched. He wanted the adrenaline of a fight. Of blood—
'Stop it. Calm down.'
From the veiny red of his Symbiote wrist, he unveiled a piece of chocolate and ate it. Symbiotes craved blood. They craved phenethylamine. But thank goodness, that mood-regulating chemical existed in chocolate too.
Still.
Still.
He suddenly wanted to vomit.
He wanted to eat their damn BRAINS out—
"Ngggh!"
He held his head.
"Stop it, stop it." His pulse was squeezing through his wrists. His fingers tensed up, nearly going numb. "Stop it. Calm down. Calm down."
'Yessss. Calm. Calm.'
This was the cost of stopping the Red Goblin. This was the curse. This was what Gwen Stacy had to experience.
Being one with the Symbiote meant to share the cravings. It meant being in pain at not being able to consume human flesh and blood and brains.
God, it was difficult. Just looking at these mercenaries, he was tempted. Oh so tempted, because with normal people at least, his moral compass was strong enough to hold it back. Him and Rash, together, they felt that way. Innocent people did not deserve to be involved.
But them. Those mercenaries…
'EaT their FUCKING BRAINS OUT—'
His head swerved away and his invisibility flickered off.
To crash through that window now, to descend on men who had broken no law yet, in front of a room full of witnesses and cell phone cameras and a legal system already fraying at its seams, would accomplish nothing but disintegrate the trust and hope that was Spider-Man.
So he did not move. He cupped his mouth, watched, and he catalogued. He let Herbie's cameras drink in every detail of every face at that table, filing them away.
"Who is next?"
'A MAN IS TRAILING A WOMAN TWO HUNDRED METERS TO YOUR SOUTH. HE HAS BEEN DOING THIS FOR THE PAST FIFTEEN MINUTES. THE WOMAN IS ON HER PHONE AND TEXTING HER FRIEND.'
He was already gone from the rooftop without a sound, leaving the diner's weak neon to flicker on undisturbed.
Spider-Man kept patrolling and patrolling. He staved off his hunger as best he could.
"...unit fourteen, be advised, three subjects found webbed and unconscious behind Knickerbocker, no injuries reported, notify the sixty-third precinct for pickup..."
"...that's the third one this month in that sector alone..."
"...my cousin's a beat cop out in Flatbush, says stickups have dropped something like thirty percent since word got around he's doing regular rounds. Says half the guys who used to run smash and grabs won't even try it anymore, not with him in the sky..."
"...can't blame them. I wouldn't rob a bank with that thing swinging around either..."
Spider-Man kept being Spider-Man. Spider-Man kept patrolling. Yet at the end of every thief and assaulter he stopped, he grunted, sucked in his tongue, and thought, 'Gwen, I have no idea how you lasted so long…!'
Because every time he saw scum, his hunger flared up. He now understood why that good-looking criminal begged him not to eat him. There was this aura, this killing intent, this focus on their skulls. It was instinctual.
He managed to wring it out of himself though. Yes, by thinking solely of justice and the people he loved, Spider-Man stopped criminals with nothing but the purest thoughts. No one screamed in fear about being eaten again.
***
Ding, ding!
Felix pushed inside, shoulders hunched under a red hoodie two. His equally red sneakers scuffed against a floor mat gone thin, and for a moment he simply stood there, blinking under the fluorescent lights like something dragged up from underground.
God. Going from extraordinary to ordinary was strange.
'The more I use my powers, the more hungry I become. Ugh.'
He literally willed himself to be normal like before. Yes, no Spider-Sense, no anything. It was just getting too much. The sensory overload of his powers, he got used to. But this hunger. The overload with the hunger, that was too much.
His stomach agreed with a low, unpleasant twist.
"Ugh…"
He knew it. He expected this. Rash expected this too. He didn't want to say it out loud. He didn't want to admit it. But this blood-hungry need, this was the price of being a superhero now.
Underneath his eyes were full black bags. It was about nine o'clock now. He spent the whole night patrolling and not sleeping or eating. The not-eating part was what he was paying dearly for.
He had never been to this particular store before. He decided he was done, didn't want to swing back home, and just willed the Symbiote suit into normal clothes. Red shirt, red shoes, and black pants.
The store itself was humble, small, and oh-so convenient. Only reason why he was here, he spotted an array of chocolates at the front counter area and he darted inside.
"Hello!" Behind the counter, a woman in her sixties looked up from a small portable television propped on a stack of phone books. She had sharp, quick eyes and short black hair. "You look terrible."
Old people, right? Talk about blunt. Felix huffed something that wasn't quite a laugh. "Thanks."
"Sorry, sorry, don't mean it as an insult." She waved a hand at him, taking in the whole slouched, hollow-eyed picture of him. "What do you want to get?"
"Chocolate."
He picked out seven bars: KitKat, Aero, OhHenry, and MarsBar. Lots and lots of MarsBar. That stuff was his favourite.
"Really? That's it?"
His arms were full of chocolate bars. He gave her a look. "Uh…yeah."
"You look like you need vegetables, young man, not chocolate."
'...she's not wrong.' The craving in his chest, the one that never fully went away no longer, twisted again at the thought of anything green, anything that wasn't red and warm and alive. He swallowed against it.
"You should try meditation too," the store lady added. "My cousin in Hong Kong is great at it. Want me to teach you what he does? Actually, he has a radio, take a listen to it, hm?"
"Yeah, I meditate. Sometimes."
"You need to do it everyday, friend. You can't just meditate once a month and say that's enough. You need good habits. Mind is body, my friend!"
"...true."
"And yes, yes, life hurts! Life makes it hard! But life always hurts! So try! Try to get those good habits, hm?"
God damn. She was good at this. Suddenly, he was carrying bagged spinach, serviceable carrots, and cucumbers along with the chocolate.
"You really still want to stick with the chocolate, young man?"
"Sorry, Mrs. Chen. The, uh, cookie just falls that way."
"I have no idea what that means but okay. More money for me."
Beep, beep, beep! The items were scanned and he gave her three nice fat wads of cash. Three whole hundred dollar bills for a bill that was a little over twenty. Mrs. Chen pretended to be ecstatic about it.
When Felix had glanced up at the very locally named "Mrs. Chen's Store", he thought he'd go in and out. He did…and yet he didn't. Mrs. Chen's Store was a simple, nothing-burger of a store. The quality of vegetables were low and the chocolate bars were slightly overpriced. The old lady managing it was a bit of a hard-ass as well.
Yet, as the sun brightly brought New York to life, Felix left the store thinking that he could do this.
Mind was body.
Life always hurts.
Yes. Mrs. Chen was right.
"I don't have to end up like Gwen." Felix smiled to himself. "Yeah. I got this."
He peeled open a MarsBar and bit the end off. He kept smiling as he chewed.